People in India are too much dependant on social media platforms for the latest news or information. Especially Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter are the main source of information that Indians mostly prefer. However, during this current COVID situation, everyone must get the correct and trustworthy information. Considering this fact, Google has launched News Showcase in partnership with 30 domestic news publishers.
Some of the news publishers include NDTV, Indian Express Group, ABP LIVE, The Hindu Group, India TV, ANI, HT Digital Streams Ltd, The Telegraph India, Amar Ujala, Punjab Kesari, Deccan Herald, Indo Asian News Service, and Zee News. On the other hand, this Google News Showcase program is already approved by 700 news publications in countries such as Australia, France, Canada, Germany, Japan, Brazil, U.K., and Italy, etc.
Google launches News Showcase in India
In a recent interview, Brad Bender, vice-president, Product Management, clarified that the main reason to launch Google News Showcase is to assist publishers to reach relevant users. Moreover, people can easily get accurate and trustworthy info, especially during this pandemic situation. Besides, publishers will also get customizable space for news content in Google News and discover.
That means all the above-mentioned publishers can now get a chance to appear on Google News and Discover platforms. Besides, they will also experience a special dedicated Google News Showcase panel. Furthermore, these distributors can currently show the content in English and Hindi languages only. However, Google also confirmed to support more regional languages in the coming days.
For now, Google has not decided about the ranking system for these news articles. They have mixed the regular posts with the premium new showcase panels. Users can simply click on any news article they like, and they’ll be re-directed to other articles from the same publisher. This can definitely help billions of people discover relevant news without getting any false information.
In other words, you can say that Google is itself giving a direct backlink to these national, regional, and local news websites. The tech giant company has also made a license agreement with the publishers. According to this agreement, Google will pay the partnered organizations so that users can get free access to paywalled content. In return, they will easily get some paid subscriptions.
To use Google News Showcase, simply download and install the Google news app on your phone. It is available for both Android as well as iOS. Launch the app and click on the Newsstand option present at the bottom right corner. This will open the news showcase section on your device.
